Now Reading
SA Minerals Council Assures it Has a Strong Focus on Safety and Health in the Mining Industry

SA Minerals Council Assures it Has a Strong Focus on Safety and Health in the Mining Industry

The Minerals Council South Africa gave a strong assurance, at a media briefing at the Investing in African Mining Indaba 2022 conference in Cape Town on Wednesday, that it was acting to halt and reverse the regression in mine safety in South Africa that had taken place over the past three or so years. “Nearly half of the staff in the Minerals Council are on safety, nearly half the budget is on safety,” highlighted CEO Roger Baxter. The Minerals Council had a tremendous focus on safety.

Last year the South African mining sector had recorded 74 fatalities, a significant increase over the 60 fatalities reported in 2020, which, in turn, was a disturbing rise in comparison to the 51 fatalities recorded in 2019. However, one area in which the industry had achieved very considerable success was in reducing the number of deaths caused by ‘fall-of-ground’ events. Once one of the biggest causes, if not the biggest single cause, of death among miners at work, ‘fall-of-ground’ now accounted for only a tiny number of occupational deaths in the sector.

The Minerals Council had developed a multipronged approach to returning mining fatalities to a downward trend. This included ensuring visible leadership at all mining operations; halting uncontrolled access to mine areas in which mining operations were no longer taking place; ensuring the maintenance of safety standards in previously mined areas in which non-mining operations were still taking place; instituting quality and critical control monitoring; and ensuring that incentives and bonuses for workers did not undermine safety.

Baxter pointed out that the Council had a safety forum, composed of the CEOs of all its member mining companies. This met regularly, to exchange information, experiences and successful practices. The Minerals Council also took a lot of data on mine safety from overseas. “Very few of our [international] competitors are mining at four kilometres depth,” he however cautioned.

Most occupational fatalities in the sector were now associated with the transport of people and materials, and with the operation of equipment. “We’ve got a huge programme on transport and machinery at the moment,” he reported. “It’s a significant work in progress.” This was a technology programme, which included, among many other things, the fitting of vehicles and equipment with collision avoidance systems and geolocation systems.  

On the health side, Minerals Council head of health Dr Thuthula Balfour pointed out that the industry’s main challenges were occupational lung diseases (from silica dust and coal dust) and occupational hearing loss (from machinery noise). But other major concerns were tuberculosis (TB) and HIV, as well as hypertension (a growing concern, because the sector’s workforce was ageing).

However, progress was being made. “We’ve seen a very steady decline in occupational lung diseases,” she reported. This was especially the case with TB. The objective was to reduce the industry’s TB rate to below the national TB rate, but currently the industry rate was still above the national rate, although only slightly.

The industry seemed to be on course to meet the agreed milestones regarding silica dust and coal dust. Progress was also being made on reducing noise levels, with mining companies replacing noisy machinery with quieter equipment.

See Also

The industry had not yet reached its target for HIV counselling of 100%, because of disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The need to reach that 100% rate was recognized.

As for Covid-19, 749 mine employees, diagnosed with Covid-19, had died from the disease, a fatality rate of 1.81%. This was significantly lower than the national Covid-19 fatality rate (again, amongst those diagnosed with the disease) of 2.6%. The Covid-19 testing rate, and the vaccination rate among mine employees, were both almost twice those among the population in general.

The industry, Balfour also highlighted, was now providing much more support for mental illness and stress among their workers. There were far more mental health professionals available on the mines today, and their services were provided on a confidential basis, at company expense. There was also widespread recognition in the industry of the dangers posed by fatigue among staff.

Mining Weekly

SUBSCRIBE TO GET OUR NEWSLETTERS:

SUBSCRIBE TO GET OUR NEWSLETTERS:

Scroll To Top

We have detected that you are using AdBlock Plus or other adblocking software which is causing you to not be able to view 360 Mozambique in its entirety.

Please add www.360mozambique.com to your adblocker’s whitelist or disable it by refreshing afterwards so you can view the site.